Gil Hates Everything

So, Ahrens and Flaherty are back at GHM to work their magic. “Seussical” is their musical from 2000 based on the work of Dr. Seuss… you know who that is, right? If not, you are the living definition of Late To The Party; go discover him right now, no matter how old you are, and don’t forget to show your kids.

“Seussical” weaves together half a dozen of Seuss’s books, with guest appearances from various random characters, and like Seuss’s books, it’s an unashamed piece of preaching for the power of wordpower, intelligence, and kindness.

There are barely any weak spots in the soundtrack. The most spectacular highlights are “Biggest Blame Fool” (for turning into a crazy live-news report), “The Military” (because it ends with “Green Eggs And Ham” as a marching song), “Notice Me Horton”, and “Solla Sollew” (hold on a moment**). But that doesn’t mean you skip through it to find those songs, because it’s just such a pleasure to listen to. Once again Ahrens and Flaherty demonstrate that you can achieve greatness through writing good tunes with appropriate and intelligent arrangements.

The show has been through a couple of incarnations; the soundtrack doesn’t include all the songs from the original performance, and also there’s a shortened, child-friendly version which cuts the military subplot and songs, but it looks like the full show is spectacularly long, so the edited version is perfectly acceptable.

I’m a bit busy today, so this writeup has to be short, but you will find this is exactly how a Dr. Seuss musical should sound (props to Flaherty) and it lives up to Seuss’s high standards for clarity, imagination, and, crucially, correct versification (props to Ahrens). Once again this team proves itself on a high-profile property.

Random Panda awards this brilliant show ten out of ten pieces of bamboo. If you’re in Vancouver, then good news – it’s coming back to the Carousel Theatre in December 2010 (hopefully once more featuring the awesome Allan Zinyk as Horton), and you are hereby ordered to go and watch it, and we’ll see you there.

** There seems to be something in my eye.

(originally posted 2010)